Wheel hoes came with one wheel or two. Single wheel machines typically ran between rows of plants and sliced off or tore up weeds, while two-wheel machines straddled one row of plants and sliced off weeds on either side. Several other attachments could be attached to mould up rows of plants, or dig a trench to lay fertilizer down as a base dressing before planting the seeds in the row.

Row Marker

This is a very essential grower's tool. They are usually self-made by hand or custom-made to the type of crop you are planting. They normally can be seen in a growers shed as a 3 row marker, 5 row marker or a 7 row marker. The most popular size is a 5 row marker at 15 inches space markers. These markers can be used for straight row planting or can be used to make a grid pattern, so each plant is located in an exact position, evenly spaced in all four directions. Or you may wish to plant 5 rows and leave the next one row as a walking track. You did not waste land or allow for weeds to grow.

Mary Sue FAN

In 1939, my sister Mary [范蘇秋容] came to New Zealand with my mother and brother and a number of other families from the Poon Yue county. The trip by boat took 8 weeks, with a stopover in Sydney to change ship to come to Wellington. These families came on a special temporary permit, to escape the Japanese invasion of China, and to unite with husbands and fathers. The long, difficult trip to NZ bonded many families for life.

Mary was 8 when she came to live in Otaki. It was happy days for her to go to school as we lived next door to the Convent, she just had to climb over the fence. However those days of education were short lived as the lease of the land was up and my father acquired a block of land and house in Ohau. There was no school nearby so she had to settle down and work in the garden. However, by being self taught, Mary managed to master a good degree of the English language.

Several years later, our father purchased a house and 13 acres in Levin, and here we stayed. Mary was not allowed to go to school, so she worked at home like most of the children that came in that time. She mastered all the jobs in the garden, ploughing, planting potatoes, rotary hoeing and even taking the truck load of vegetables to market. In 1958, my father decided to retire and we moved to live in Hong Kong. It was there she met her husband Laocino Fan [范名正], a young interior designer and budding architect.

Mary and her husband came back to NZ in 1963. Work for architects was hard to come by. So, living in our family home and having the garden equipment available, and now with three mouths to feed, Mary ploughed up a small paddock and started growing tomatoes, broccoli, artichoke and other vegetables for the local market. She continued to do this, supporting the family till her three children left school. She then sold-up and moved to live in Wellington.

George SUE

2015

George and Mary SUE

When I wrote this text, sadly George [蘇裕明] had just passed away. I had only met him several times and was very much instilled by his sense of humour. When I arrived at his home in Levin in August 2015 to photograph him and his sister Mary Sue Fan [范蘇秋容], despite the wet weather, he enthusiastically showed me in the garden shed, his collection of primitive and the then high-tech farming gears that his family used when they were young.

When I proposed to reconstruct a scene about their bittersweet harsh farming life, like many reticent Chinese, they posed gingerly and discreetly at the beginning. It was when I asked them to “Be you at young, helping out the family,” they were then afire and flung into a hilarious theatrical performance. Those once bitter memories are now ‘sweet as’.